Old Dominion

Old Dominion played a stellar performance in Los Angeles last weekend at the Nova by Microsoft. Goldenvoice is getting everyone excited for the recently announced Stagecoach 2017 and brought in an act that played last years festival.  This was my third time seeing the band and the first time as a headliner, but its also their first tour as a headliner, so I’ll go with first time seeing them without sunglasses, who knew they had eyes? 

Steve Moakler got the night started and the couple of songs he got airplay for had the crowd pretty excited to see him take the stage. Having written Dierk’s Benlty’s “Riser” and performing it midway through the set kept the crowd going even on a slower inspirational number.  His bandmates were energetic and kept the stage presence high and even played a little cover of the Eagles’ “Take it Easy” before closing his set with his newest release “Suitcase”.  The crowd would have been happy with a few more from him, but they were even more excited to get to the main attraction.

Old Dominion came out to raucous downtown, Saturday night, sold-out crowd of just over 2000 in the small club style Nova.  They opened with “Beer Can in a Truck Bed.”  It’s always a treat to see a band headline a show when they haven’t released enough material to fill the slot.  They are guaranteed to play stuff that inspired them, and stuff that audiences always enjoy hearing. The catch with the guys from Old Dominion: Matthew Ramsey (lead vocals, guitar), Trevor Rosen (guitarist, keyboards), Whit Sellers (drums), Brad Tursi (lead guitar), is they’ve written songs for Dierks Bentley, Chris Young, The Band Perry, Black Shelton, Luke Bryan, Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, and more top tier country artists.  Everyone knows I’m a huge fan of cover songs, but does it count as a cover when you wrote it? Either way it was great to hear songs that you know and enjoy, songs like “Sangria” (Blake Shelton) and “Save it for a Rainy Day” (Kenny Chesney) are great additions to any set of music, and you can never take a song away from its writer. Some other songs written in part by band members and released by other artists, but performed at the show were, “Guy Walks Into a Bar” (Tyler Farr), “Chainsaw” (The Band Perry), “Make You Miss Me” (Sam Hunt). In a few more hit albums from this band, you won’t be able to see them perform so many songs that aren’t on their albums.

In addition to the virtual radio dial of hits released from other artists they played every track off their Meat and Candy album, as well as a few songs yet to be released, closing the set with the two biggest hits “Break Up With Him” and “Song for Another Time”, which is a catchy tune almost entirely made up of memorable lyrics from extremely popular songs to tell its own story.  The intro to the performance featured the sound of someone scrubbing through a radio dial and catching snippets of the featured songs, an extra tribute to a song that is a conglomerate homage to some of the biggest songs in rock and country.  Brad Tursi the lead guitarist was even on the monitor for his solo for it.  They departed from the set list to squeeze in a new track “Still Writing Songs About You” which will likely be a hit before long.

The entire night was full of good and fun music played by guys that truly enjoyed playing it for their fans. And definitely wet the appetite for Goldenvoice’s Stagecoach Spotlight series leading up to the main event.

Setlist #

• Beer Can in a Truck Bed
• Said Nobody
• Half Empty
• Not Everything’s About You
• Sangria  
• Can’t Get You
• Save It For a Rainy Day
• Til It’s Over
• Guy Walks Into a Bar
• Be With Me
• Dirt
• Chainsaw
• Nowhere Fast
• Make You Miss Me
• Snapback
• Shut Me Up
• Crazy Beautiful Sexy
• So You Go
• Break Up With Him
• Song For Another Time

Encore

• We Got It Right
• Still Writing Songs About You
• Wrong Turns

Check out the photo gallery from the show: http://festivalsandgigs.com/photos-old-dominion-and-steve-moakley-rock-nova